October Tales: Part 3 of 3

 Hello everyone –

 

For the final installment of this year’s October Tales series, I have a trio of poems by Madison Julius Cawein (1865-1914), a Kentuckian poet who was very popular during the early years of the 20^th century. His poems – which filled 16+ published volumes during his lifetime – have a Romantic quality that earned him the title of “the Keats of Kentucky,” and I understand that at least some of his books adorned the shelves of my great-grandparents’ parlor in Henderson County, Kentucky. So here are some verses in celebration of this night – Halloween – the Keltik New Year’s Eve!

1893 Photo of Madison Julius Cawein

“A Forest Child”

 

There is a place I search for still,

Sequestered as the world of dreams,

A bushy hollow, and a hill

That whispers with descending streams,

Cool, careless waters, wandering down,

Like Innocence who runs to town,

Leaving the wildwood and its dreams,

And prattling like the forest streams.

 

But still in dreams I meet again

The child who bound me, heart and hand,

And led me with a wildflower chain

Far from our world, to Faeryland:

Who made me see and made me know

The lovely Land of Long-Ago,

Leading me with her little hand

Into the world of Wonderland.

 

The years have passed: how far away

The day when there I met the child,

The little maid, who was a fay,

Whose eyes were dark and undefiled

And crystal as a woodland well,

That holds within its depths a spell,

Enchantments, featured like a child,

A dream, a poetry undefiled.

 

Around my heart she wrapped her hair,

And bound my soul with lips and eyes,

And led me to a cavern, where

Grey Legend dwelt in kingly guise,

Her kinsman, dreamier than the moon,

Who called her Fancy, read her rune,

And bade her with paternal eyes

Divest herself of her disguise.

 

And still I walk with her in dreams,

Though many years have passed since then,

And that high hill and its wild streams

Are lost as is that faery glen.

And as the years go swiftly by

I find it harder, when I try,

To meet with her, who led me then

Into the wildness of that glen.

 

“Halloween”

 

It was down in the woodland on last Hallowe'en,

   Where silence and darkness had built them a lair,

That I felt the dim presence of her, the unseen,

   And heard her still step on the hush-haunted air.

 

It was last Hallowe'en in the glimmer and swoon

   Of mist and of moonlight, where once we had sinned,

That I saw the gray gleam of her eyes in the moon,

   And hair, like a raven, blown wild on the wind.

 

It was last Hallowe'en where starlight and dew

   Made mystical marriage on flower and leaf,

That she led me with looks of a love, that I knew

   Was dead, and the voice of a passion too brief.

 

It was last Hallowe'en in the forest of dreams,

   Where trees are eidolons and flowers have eyes,

That I saw her pale face like the foam of far streams,

   And heard, like the night-wind, her tears and her sighs.

 

It was last Hallowe'en, the haunted, the dread,

   In the wind-tattered wood, by the storm-twisted pine,

That I, who am living, kept tryst with the dead,

   And clasped her a moment who once had been mine.

 

“The World Of Faery”

 

I. When in the pansy-purpled stain

Of sunset one far star is seen,

Like some bright drop of rain,

Out of the forest, deep and green,

O'er me at Spirit seems to lean,

The fairest of her train.

 

II. The Spirit, dowered with fadeless youth,

Of Lay and Legend, young as when,

Close to her side, in sooth,

She led me from the marts of men,

A child, into her world, which then

To me was true as truth.

 

III. Her hair is like the silken husk

That holds the corn, and glints and glows;

Her brow is white as tusk;

Her body like a wilding rose,

And through her gossamer raiment shows

Like starlight closed in musk.

 

IV. She smiles at me; she nods at me;

And by her looks I am beguiled

Into the mystery

Of ways I knew when, as a child,

She led me 'mid her blossoms wild

Of faery fantasy.

 

V. The blossoms that, when night is here,

Become sweet mouths that sigh soft tales;

Or, each, a jeweled ear

Leaned to the elfin dance that trails

Down moonrayed cirques of haunted vales

To cricket song and cheer.

 

VI. The blossoms that, shut fast all day,

Primrose and poppy, darkness opes,

Slowly, to free a fay,

Who, silken-soft, leaps forth and ropes

With rain each web that, starlit, slopes

Between each grassy spray.

 

VII. The blossoms from which elves are born,

Sweet wombs of mingled scent and snow,

Whose deeps are cool as morn;

Wherein I oft have heard them blow

Their pixy trumpets, silvery low

As some bee's drowsy horn.

 

VIII. So was it when my childhood roamed

The woodland's dim enchanted ground,

Where every mushroom domed

Its disc for them to revel 'round;

Each glow-worm forged its flame, green drowned

In hollow snow that foamed

 

IX. Of lilies, for their lantern light,

To lamp their dance beneath the moon;

Each insect of the night,

That rasped its thin, vibrating tune,

And owl that raised its sleepy croon,

Made music for their flight.

 

X. So is it still when twilight fills

My soul with childhood's memories

That haunt the far-off hills,

And people with dim things the trees,

With faery forms that no man sees,

And dreams that no man kills.

 

XI. Then all around me sway and swing

The Puck-lights of their firefly train,

Their elfin reveling;

And in the bursting pods, that rain

Their seeds around my steps, again

I hear their footsteps ring;

 

XII. Their faery feet that fall once more

Within my way; and then I see,

As oft I saw before,

Her Spirit rise, who shimmeringly

Fills all my world with poetry,

The Loveliness of Yore.

 

Happy Keltik New Year tomorrow! 😊

 

Rob